Less Than Zero: Dead Summer
by Jobeykobra
Summary: Clay returns to L.A. for one month for his Summer vacation after his first year at Camden in 1984. He learns that this decision may not be his best.
1. Chapter 1

**1**

People are still afraid to merge in L.A. I haven't heard that phrase since the last time Blair said it to me on that drive home from LAX, but I can still hear her saying it in my ear with the same dull tone. It's summer now, and I'm back in L.A., but for only a month. Julian sits across from me, drunk and stoned, in a pretty nice restaurant across from Tower Records. I can see he's not doing any better since I last saw him, but at least I was finally able to contact him without trouble. He's drinking his third martini which he had ordered with a fake ID. He drinks it too fast and I'm about to tell him to stop, but I don't.

"Are you still prostituting for Finn?" I ask him.

"What do you care?" He replies.

"I don't know."

"Nobody knows what they care for anymore, you know?" He says, slurring every other word.

"Do you?"

After hesitating for a moment he just says, "I don't know." He takes another sip of the martini and his eyes water up.

The cheese pizza I ordered arrives, the pretty waitress smiling at me and her face turning red as she sets it down on the table. I smile back, barely.

"You're a fucking sleaze, Clay," Julian snaps at me as the waitress walks away while looking back at me. She gives me a wink which I don't return.

"I'm not the one prostituting myself, Julian." I take a sip of the Coke I ordered earlier, which is now semi-flat. I take out my Wayfarers and put them on. Julian glares at me angrily and his face contorts from intoxication and he mumbles something like, "Fuckhead," but I ignore it.

"Are you still dealing heroin?" I ask.

"What do you think?"

"Nevermind." I take another sip of the Coke.

I begin eating a slice of the pizza and Julian just leans over the table, rubbing the top of his head and gripping at his hair. I offer him a piece, but he swats it away when I hold it up to him. I eat in silence for a moment.

"Are you still seeing Blair?" Julian says.

"No. We agreed... not to," I continue eating the slice of pizza.

"Who brought you home from the airport?"

"My mom."

Julian stays quiet and just keeps rubbing the top of his head with tears slowly running down his face and dripping off his chin. He takes another sip of the martini while sobbing. I just sit in silence, finishing my second piece of the pizza. I wind up paying the bill with only a fourth of the pizza finished and drive Julian home.

"You should stop this, Julian," I say, watching the headlights of the cars passing me.

"Stop what?" He snaps.

"Stop all of it."

"_You_ haven't." He starts laughing and I ignore it. I drive without speaking to him and when we get to his house his parents aren't home. They probably wouldn't really care anyway. He stumbles out of the car and I wind up helping hold him up as we walk to the door. I tell him I'll see him tomorrow, sort of in the form of a question, and he just nods uncertainly and shuts the front door of the house.

When I get home, my mother's car is parked in the driveway with another man's car, though it looks different from the one I saw the last time I was here. When I step into the house, the lights are all off except for one dim yellow one in the upstairs hallway. When I get upstairs I can hear mattress springs squeaking and heavy male breathing from inside my mother's bedroom, but I just go into my room and shut the door. I put a Fixx cassette into my stereo and fast forward to "Reach the Beach" as I sit on my bed and stare at the Elvis Costello poster on the wall, his amusing smile still standing.


	2. Chapter 2

**2**

I'm sitting at the beach this afternoon, though I'm not sure why, seeing as Julian didn't want to come, and I watch the surfers hitting the waves in the distance, one of which looks like Trent. Then this brings back that night in the hotel room, and I see that twelve or eleven year-old girl on the bed, Trent looking at me as he molests her. I remember the reason he gave me for why he did this, "Because I've got nothing to lose." That's when I look away from the surfers and lay back on the towel and look up at the sky. I don't know how I feel about being here anymore.

Back at Camden, they call me "The Boy from L.A." and it annoys me because when I tell them my name is Clay, they don't listen and it makes no difference. That may be one of the reasons I want so much to come back when I'm there. All I'm reminded of is this city, the air, the smell of the Pacific, the bars and clubs and coke. Whenever I leave, this place is all I look to, and yet there's not a seed of happiness here, and the people don't have any to give. Rip comes to mind, and I wonder if I will ever see him again. I remember someone writing "Rip called" on my door back at Camden, and some guy thinking it meant "R.I.P." and telling me I should be underground from all the coke I do, and I just ignored him. But maybe he's right. Maybe I should just disappear.

"Hey, Clay," I hear a voice say, and when I turn my head to face it, it just happens to be one of my sisters. I wonder if she stole any more grams from me. "What are you doing here?" She's with some guy who looks to be at least three years older than her, whatever her age is now. Sixteen? The guy looks about my age.

I lift up my wayfarers and mutter, "Hey."

"You're such a loser, Clay," my sister says, kicking sand in my face. The guy laughs.

"Why don't you take your friend with you and go snort something?" I retort, wiping the sand off of me.

"I don't want to right now. Mom's boyfriend is over now, anyway, so we can't go back to the house."

"Who's her boyfriend now?"

"Some guy named Jerry. I only met him once." She looks over at the guy. "Come on, Brett." Both of them walk past me and I lower my sunglasses and look back out at the waves, listening to the mix of the seagulls and crashing waves. I think I belong here. "The Boy from L.A."


	3. Chapter 3

**3**

I'm with Julian again at one of his hustling friends' house parties. We're in the kitchen mingling with a large group of male and female models-turned-prostitutes/coke dealers. Nothing new. I've been asked by five different guys if I want to score any heroin or coke, and I wound up purchasing an envelope of supposedly "pure" coke for a hundred dollars. I have it pocketed and Julian talks with the guys, specifically the number of customers they've "serviced".

I wander out to the pool in the back of the house without Julian, the blue glow from the pool lights quivering in the water, looking all too familiar. There's a glass table on the other side of the pool and a blond guy sitting at it smiles at me flirtatiously and I wind up snorting my coke with him. He asks me how I know Julian and I tell him we're high school friends, and he asks me if I've screwed anyone since I've been back from Camden. He's coming on to me pretty strong, and once we're both coked out he caresses my thigh. Just then this girl comes by, kissing the guy on the mouth, and then she looks at me and grins. She then snorts a line of some of the guy's coke and whispers something in his ear. The guy nods.

"You want to have a three-way?" he asks.

I don't say anything, and the girl just stares at me eagerly.

"Come on, man," the guy urges. "It'll be fun."

I consider it, but in the end I wind up shaking my head. "Sorry. Not really up for it."

"We'll be upstairs if you change your mind," the girl says.

The two walk off and I go back inside to try to find Julian. I find him sitting in the kitchen, shooting up, the vein in his arm looking as though it's about to pop. I notice both of his arms are full of needle marks.

"Hey, Julian," I say.

He looks up at me with these droopy eyes, his mouth slightly open and he smiles, stoned.

"You should try this shit," he says, struggling to keep his eyes on me.

"I'm sure I should, but I think I'm gonna leave."

"I'll go with you. Wait." He pulls the empty needle out of his arm and walks over to me. "See ya, Terry." He waves to a guy pocketing an envelope.

"Later, Jules," the guy says, waving back.

"Jules?" I whisper to Julian as we exit the house to the driveway.

"Yeah? What?"

"He calls you Jules?"

"Oh... yeah," he mumbles.

We get in his new Porsche and I volunteer to drive.

"Where do you wanna go?" he asks.

"I don't know. Anywhere but here."

"What the fuck is wrong with you, Clay?" he demands, looking at me with a dazed frown.

I stay silent and pull out onto the road and start heading to one of the night clubs in the area with a song from the _Thriller_ album, I think _Human Nature_, playing on the radio. I manage to keep Julian away from heroin for the rest of the night at the club, but of course I meet someone I knew from high school and he winds up offering us some blow, and we wind up snorting the whole envelope of it in less than an hour.


	4. Chapter 4

**4**

Blair heard I came here for a month three days ago on the third week of my visit. She agreed to meet up at a burger joint to "reminisce", as she put it. We sit in one of the booths, not eating anything, but drinking a couple of Cokes.

"So what have you been doing at Camden?" she asks.

"Oh, you know, Dressed to Get Screwed parties and there's this nice place for drinks all the students know about called End of the World."

"Meet anyone?"

"Not really. No one really likes me there."

She shrugs. "No one really likes you here, either."

"That's the problem, Blair," I tell her softly. "I don't know where I belong."

She sips from her drink, rolling her eyes, and says nothing.

"I mean wherever I go I long for the other. I go to Camden and all I can think about is the beach. All I think about is the beach and the... the lifestyle. It's all I know."

Still nothing out of her.

"And when I'm here I feel the same for there. It's so simple there, and I don't see half the things I see here. It's so... ordinary."

"Define ordinary."

I change the subject. "So who told you about me coming back?"

"A friend," she says simply.

"What friend?"

"Julian."

"Why didn't you just say Julian?" I mutter.

"Julian told me a few days ago and said he hadn't seen you yet."

Why would he say that? I think, but instead I just say, "Oh."

She changes the topic. "So what were you saying about not seeing half the things you see here?"

"Oh, nothing." A flash. The dead body in the alleyway, the coyote dying, my father, Julian that one night in the bathroom with Finn, the young girl with Trent on top of her with his dick in her mouth inquiring about the dead body. I shut my eyes for a second. "You know."

"Clay, I don't understand you. I never could."

"Neither could I," I take a sip of my drink and neither of us talk for the rest of the time we're there. I never ask how Blair's doing and she never brings anything up. We leave with the same silence.


	5. Chapter 5

**5**

It's my second to last night here, and I drive to Julian's place. I've called him several times from my house and he never picked up. I assume he's out. There's some need for me to hang out with him, to give him some sense of friendship, and I don't know why. A part of our past wants to hold on, I guess.

I pull up to his driveway, and only his car sits there. When I walk up to his front door, I notice there's not a sound coming from within the place, and I cautiously step inside.

"Julian?" I call out into the dark house.

That's when I see a dim light coming from Julian's room. Not a sound. I walk up the stairs, again calling out, "Julian." He never responds. I step into his room, trying not to make a sound, and the instant I look over at his bed, I see him lying there, his needle-scarred arm slumped over the side, a trickle of blood dripping out.

"Julian?" I say, walking up to his body.

His eyes are closed and I hope he's sleeping, but there's no motion in his chest. I check his pulse in his neck, and I don't get anything, but figure I may be doing it wrong since I've never checked a pulse before.

"Julian," I whisper, shaking his shoulder.

Nothing.

I look down at the floor below his arm, but no needle lies there. There's no indication that he shot up here, and I look back at Julian. He may just be out cold, I hope. Suddenly there's movement in his hand and Julian's eyes begin to open slowly, failing to open more than halfway.

"Finn?" he says, his voice quivering.

"Clay."

"Clay-ton?" he murmurs, slurring the word.

"I thought you were dead," I say calmly.

"Julian never dies, man. I am not goin' anywhere." He looks at his arm. "Holy shit. Is that blood?" He laughs, but I simply stand and stare at him.

"How strong was that shit?"

"I don't know. I'm totally trashed, though, obviously." He looks at his arm again and the floor. "Fuck, that's bad." He lies back down and shuts his eyes.

"Well it's not good," I say, smiling slightly.

Julian laughs again and I sit on the floor next to his bed. He asks me why I came and I tell him I wanted to hang out. Julian looks up at the ceiling for a while, not saying a thing, and when I ask him if he wants to go hang out again, he's out again, his body as limp as it was when I walked in. I leave.


	6. Chapter 6

**6**

My mother drives me back to the airport, asking me how my stay was. I find it weird that my mother is asking me what I did while visiting home. I tell her, "The usual," and that's all she needs to hear to make her semi-happy. I never did meet Jerry, or whatever his name was, and I don't bother asking about him.

When we get to the airport terminal, my mother kisses me on the cheek and hugs me, trying to keep the image that we're still part of a family, and I walk to my flight feeling nothing more or less than I did when I came. There was something I was expecting to get out of this visit, but the reason eludes me, and that empty dissatisfaction remains. However, I don't miss Camden, but staying in L.A. won't get me anything, either. And in the end, the only thing that sticks out about this visit, and the only thing I bother to remember, is the thought that came into my mind that night at Julian's house; the thought that that may have been the last time I will ever see him alive. Then I realize I may never see him dead either, and I recall that billboard on the highway I saw the last time I was here:

**Disappear Here**


End file.
